In recent years, the rise of the Internet, automated telephone services, and other information services has been phenomenal. Information about every conceivable activity is available in large quantities.
The popularity and convenience of “shopping from home” has also increased. While home shopping has been available for many years in the form of “shopping channels” on broadcast or cable television, the presentation of information in such an environment is static, and cannot be tailored to the user's needs. The viewer is not able to return to a previous section of the program in order to review a demonstration of a particular feature of a product. A viewer may only be interested in a particular aspect of the product, but there is no way of choosing which aspects of the product are to be reviewed. In addition, it is difficult for the user to increase the speed of the transaction, since the information which is vital for the transaction (eg price, terms, etc) is often not available until late in the presentation of the product or service.
The rise of the Internet has solved some of these problems. Users are able to interact with on-line catalogues or shopping malls in a variety of ways. The Internet has fewer restrictions and permits a more user guided electronic shopping experience. However, with the meteoric rise of the Internet, another problem has occurred. With so many sites on the Internet, and so much information available, it is easy to become lost. If the location of a web or page (a URL or Uniform Resource Locator) is lost, it is unlikely that a user will “stumble across” the site again. The bookmarking facilities available with some web browsers have aided the management of URLs. However, these bookmarking facilities usually rely on textual information for identification of the URL. This can be inconvenient, since a user may not clearly remember the text associated with the page, but instead recall an overall “look” of the page, or recall the content of the page.
Another problem with electronic commerce sites on the Internet is that the navigation may not be obvious or intuitive. Also, this navigation cannot often be tailored to the needs of the individual. If an individual is interested only in certain aspects of the product or service, it can be quite frustrating to be forced to travel through various layers of web pages in order to reach the few details which are of significant interest. Access to Internet sites, particularly those from overseas, can be particularly slow, especially at times of peak usage. Access will also be slower if the site contains a lot of large graphics files, such as may be the case for an on-line catalogue. Thus, the use of data intensive (or “rich”) types such as video is, in many cases, practically limited by the amount of bandwidth available to the typical user.
If a purchase is to be made via these web sites, it is often necessary to enter credit card details and identification details each time a purchase is made, for security purposes. This can be quite time consuming. Finally, in order to purchase goods via the Internet, a user must have access to a computer, and have an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). When the user desires to use an on-line ordering system on the Internet, he or she must go through the steps of turning on the computer, and connecting to the ISP, before any shopping can commence.
Digital television presents the opportunity for a rich interaction with the data and programs stored on a server, through the large bandwidth available to the digital television viewer. The so-called “set-top” box, necessary for decoding the digital television signals, is also able to control some interaction with the content shown on the digital television. By using a combination of set top box software, server side software, and the network, it is possible to provide many applications that can be used in the home, and which do not require expensive extra equipment. For example, systems for banking, weather updates, and stock market information are being developed for the digital TV market.
However, such information services, while useful, are not always easy to use. The interaction with the information service is limited, since the digital TV remote control was designed to perform a limited number of tasks, interaction with information services using a standard remote control can be complex, and non-intuitive.
Smart cards have been used in electronic commerce for some time. Simple smart cards incorporate memory device whereas advanced smart cards supplement the memory with a processing capability. Smart cards are capable of providing secure encryption of sensitive data, and of providing authentication of electronic transactions. Many other methods are also used for electronic payment, such as digital certificates, and digital cash. A number of these electronic payment techniques use a form of digital certificate which authenticates the user to a vendor, or a third party, where the third party is responsible for controlling the transaction between the vendor and the user. Once authenticated, the funds for the transaction are able to be received from a nominated bank account. In other methods, the digital certificate authenticates not the user, but a digital representation of funds, which is encapsulated by the digital certificate. Still other methods use smart cards to carry a representation of funds in digital form, known as digital cash or digital wallets.
Business cards are well known and almost all persons engaged in a business have a business card. Typically these are fabricated from cardboard and are very inexpensive, being intended to be given away by the person in business (the donor) to a prospective or existing customer (the donee). Traditionally the business card includes the name of the business person, their title, their educational qualifications, the company name, the address of their office, the contact details such as fax, telephone and e-mail, and like data relating to the donor. In recent times with the reduced cost of reproducing photographic images, very often a photograph of the donor is also provided in order to better refresh the memory of the donee whenever the donee views the business card.
Trading cards are well known, and are commonly bought, sold, traded and collected by many people. These cards are typically produced as sets of cards pertaining to a specific subject, and individual cards in a set typically contain information and images relating to different aspects of that particular subject. For example, a set of trading cards depicting a specific baseball team might have individual cards, each of which depicts a different member of the team. Similarly, a set of trading cards relating to a particular movie could consist of individual cards, each of which depicts a specific character from the movie. Trading cards have traditionally been physical cards, made of printed cardboard, plastic, paper or metal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,561 (Pace) describes a computer-based trading card system which uses diskettes as an item which is traded between people. Each of the aforementioned diskettes contains a “key”, which is used to unlock data from a compact disk memory (CD ROM), where the CD ROM is accessible across a communications network. The CD ROM contains data in effect corresponding to “cards” in a set of trading cards, and makes this data available to a trader having the aforementioned diskette, and the trader is able to store this data on a hard disk, typically of a local computer operated by the trader. After a single use, however, the key on the diskette is typically disabled permanently.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,748,731 (Shepherd) is directed towards “electronic trading cards” where individual encrypted electronic files represent virtual trading cards, and these files are decrypted by a user when the user has a corresponding decryption key.
Also currently available are various types of digital trading cards, which can be bought, sold, and swapped in “virtual” form, i.e., without involving a physical card or a physical medium having stored thereon an electronic version of the card. Examples of this genre include INZOMNIA® digital trading cards, and CYBERACTION® interactive digital trading cards.
In addition to being used for trading and collecting, trading cards can also be used for playing games. These include simple memory games, in which, for example, trading cards are placed face-down, and players attempt to find pairs of matching cards. More sophisticated strategy games are also possible. U.S. Pat. No. 5,662,332 (Garfield) is directed to game playing which involves use of trading cards as game components. In one version of this game, cards being used by a player can gain “energy”, which allows the player to use the card to perform specific actions particular to the card in question. Garfield discloses the type of game, incorporating physical cards, as well as equivalent electronic components in computer games, interactive networks and other media.
Smart cards, as well as performing their conventional electronic purpose, can also be collected, traded and displayed in collections. Some types of smart card, such as phone cards, are printed with attractive pictures having different designs on different cards, and these are well suited to collecting and trading activities. When used electronically however, these cards are typically used for unrelated purposes, such as banking, access to public telephones and so on.
Physical trading cards typically have printed information concerning the relevant subject matter displayed on the card itself. Thus in one example, statistics relating to the particular baseball player who is pictured on the card can be printed on the card. In another example, a depiction of a game character can be printed on the card, as well as characteristics of the character. If an owner of such a trading card wishes to find out more information about the subject depicted on the card, the owner must typically access associated material in physical form, such as a related brochure. Alternatively, the owner may visit a “web site” which is identified on the card. The physical cards, in this case, can be implemented with a shape and functionality of a CD ROM, thereby being insertable into a CD ROM drive on a personal computer (PC). This facilitates access to network based associated information. POWER DECK® trading cards from UPPER DECK® use this aforementioned approach.
The need to insert the aforementioned type of CD ROM trading cards into a PC places a conceptual barrier between the user and the trading card environment, and attenuates the degree to which the trading card owner can relate to this environment.
In recent times, smart cards have been gaining commercial acceptance and the percentage of the population which has access to a smart card reader is steadily increasing.